Movie Reviews

Poor quality, but O'Connor's story is faithful from beginnin

fra7299 | California, United States | 07/12/2008

(3 out of 5 stars)

"I guess there are two ways to view this DVD. From a literary standpoint, this is almost a flawless version of Flannery O'Connor's short story, as most characters and situations are exactly the same as the story. However, from a film viewing standpoint, it could have been better. The film's quality definitely seems dated, and seems to have a low budget quality about it. It's ironic because the film's poor quality blends in right with the dreary mood of the story.

However, I found the DVD quite worthwhile because I found the story interesting enough and it seemed to follow right along with O'Connor's tale. In "The Displaced Person", Mrs. McIntyre, who owns land in Georgia after World War 2, goes against the grain by allowing an outsider, a foreign man and his family, to come in and work on her farm. Immediately when he comes, the place seems to be disrupted. While Mrs. McIntyre loves Mr. Guizac's (the displaced person's) work ethic, others, such as Mrs. Shortley, resent that a foreigner can come in and "mess" things up. Harmony is not easy to achieve once McIntyre allows his family to stay, and eventually this leads to Mrs. McIntyre deciding to ask the Shortleys to leave. However, Mrs. Shortley, overhearing this, decides to have her family leave. This leads to more turmoil and Mrs. McIntyre must deal with the conflict of keeping or firing the Displaced Person. This eventually leads to a few tragedies on the farm.

What this film does a superb job of is underscoring the themes that O'Connor loved to present. The idea of jealousy or simple-mindedness is examined in the character of Mr. and Mrs. Shortley. While Mrs. Shortley has visions that Mr. Guizac will lead to nothing but destruction, her husband is as narrow-minded and prejudiced as she is about foreigners. Mrs. McIntyre seems to be looking for "salvation", but she only finds it in the Displaced Person, Mr. Guizac, not in the priest's lectures. In this way, many of the characters are misled and ultimately must pay the consequence for not seeing situations in more reasonable ways. While the Displaced Person comes in and ruins the harmony, many of the characters are eaten up by their own motivations and seemingly destroy themselves with gossip and attempts at self-gain.

What makes this a great film for fans of O'Connor is that there are overtones to a deep psychological meaning that you might not find in just the average movie. This film was clearly designed to be true to the story, and so the impact is greater. It is a rather short film, being only about fifty minutes in length, and there is even a short performance from Samuel L. Jackson in here.

I would say that if you are a big O'Connor fan than this is worth a check out; if you aren't then you might not be so impressed. I give four stars for the film itself, but 2 for the quality. "